Many our readers are well known for the foundations of the food chain: from sunlight plants get nutrientsThey feed animals, and predators feed on other animals. However, not everyone knows that from this rule, as from many others, there are exceptions: in nature there are predatory plants. In traps, they attract animals - most often insects, although lizards, snails can be victims, and in some cases even small mammals.

In this article we will present you predatory plants. Photo and titles will help to evaluate the exquisite beauty of these extends.

Amazing plants

It should be known that the so-called carnivorous plants can be found on all continents. Botany scientists united this group of perennial herbaceous plants. Often they belong to different kinds and families, but they are united by a way to satisfy the "feeling of hunger."

You may know that plants have authotrophic metabolism: they convert chemical compounds that are in the air and soil, organic substances. They serve as a source of food for many living organisms. Otherwise, it is the case with predatory plants (photos and titles we will be presenting below): They fill the lack of chemical compounds necessary for their development due to additional nutrition: insects and much less often with small animals.

Usually these perennial plants They grow on rather poor soils, which are not enough phosphorus, nitrogen, magnesium, potassium, sodium. On the territory of Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union there are 18 species that are part of 4 clans of predatory plants. Surely you are interested in how they look. Residents of the North-Western regions of Russia are well known as a predatory plant growing on swampy areas: these are two types of Rosyanok - English and round-hearted.

Interestingly, in Russia Rusyanka, the impact of centuries used good glory. She even gave her a very affectionate name - solar or God's dew, spray gun, tsaris eyes. Even before the emergence of widely used antibiotics, this plant used folk healers to treat the disease of the respiratory organs, with headaches and migranes, as a cosmetic agent from warts.

Types of predatory plants

Insectivore plants are a collective name of almost 630 species of 19 families that catch and digest small animals, more often insects. So they fill the photosynthesis of one of the forms of power heterotrophic. As a result, predatory plants whose photos we placed in this article are less dependent on the soil inorganic nitrogen, which is necessary for the synthesis of their proteins.

Most of these perennial herbate plants. Experts believe that real predatory plants evolved in five different groups of colors. How do these unusual creatures eat? What plant is predatory? What does it have features? We will try to answer these questions.

As a rule, "predators" are pretty attractive -oni brightly painted, possess a strong aroma that attracts insects. Justice for the sake of fairness should be recognized that some predatory plants, photos of which can be seen in the editions of flower growing, the smell are so pleasant that he likes not only insect. For example, veinea flies has a sweet fragrance. Indians consider this flower with a symbol of female start, harmony and love. But the predatory plant of Darlingtonia makes not the most pleasant smell of rot. This is the result of digestive activities.

Over time, the leaves of the predatory plants were changed, turning into custheses: pita (urns), which are filled with digestible liquid, adhesive traps, quickly triggered traps. For example, the Rosyanka sheet is littered with droplets of sticky substance. Americans call this plant grass of precious stones. The insect attracted by shine sits onto a trap sheet and sticks tightly: the more active the midge is trying to free themselves, the stronger is fixed in the adhesive.

Most insectivorous plants are able to distinguish edible from inedible. They do not react to false signals, for example, on raindrops. But when the trap is sitting insect, the veins, which are on the sheet, clasp it from all sides, and the sheet turns into the cocoon. In such a state, substances are distinguished from it, in its composition close to the digestive juice of animals. They dissolve the chitin of insect covers, and the nutrients are transferred along the plant vessels. The trap is revealed in a few days - it is ready for hunting again.

In the girlfriend, the leaf during the capture of the insect is not collapsed. Nitrogen contained in the sacrifice body gives an impetus to the production of digestive fluid: externally resembles fat, probably from here and the name of the plant has come.

Darlingtonia, Sarration and Neztasy hunt a little differently: the leaves of these plants were transformed into the lines, which are filled with digestive juice. Insects, hitting the inside wall of the sheet, sculp on the bottom of the traps, where they die.

Venus Mukholovka is considered the most active hunter. Its leaves, more reminiscent of seashells, they are covered with sensitive hairs. It costs to one of them to touch how the sash instantly slam. The plant begins to highlight digestive substances, and after the completion of the "meal" leaves reopened. The digestive cycle in predatory plants lasts from five hours to two months.

And now we will present you the most interesting, in our opinion, plants. The names of predatory plants are mainly known only to those skilled in the art, but we hope that the photo placed under the description will help you remember these unusual representatives of the Flora of our planet.

NEPENTHES

From other carnivorous plants, non-tentures is distinguished by the size: "jug" of such a plant often reaches a length of 30 cm. This trap is ideal for capturing and digesting insects and even small lizards, amphibians and mammals. The plant is famous for a sweet aroma, which attracts victims. As soon as they get into the jug, the plant begins to digest them. This process can last up to two months.

Scientists have about 150 types of NEPENTHES, which grow predominantly in the eastern hemisphere. Interestingly, the jugs of some species of these plants use monkeys as cups for drinking, because these are large animals that do not threaten the role of the victim.

Stylidium

Scientists continue to argue this plant on the carnivities of this plant. They did not come to unified view Regarding whether the stylidium is truly carnivore, or thus, the plant is protected from annoying insects. Some varieties have sticky hairs that capture insects that do not participate in the pollination process, and their leaves are distinguished by digestive enzymes.

Studies are still conducted to determine the importance of insects in the life of the stylidium.

Zirivanka

There are several versions explaining the origin of the name of this plant: digestive substances resembling fat, wide leaves with a special oily coating. The birthplace of this carnivorous plant is North, South and Central America, Eurasia. The victims of the girlfriend fall into sticky mucus, and the food enzymes are slowly dissolved.

Darlingtonia

Pretty rare predatory plant growing in the northern part of California and cold waters of Oregon swamps. It is very covered: the plant does not only lure into his jug of insects thanks to the sweet aroma, but also has false "outputs" in it. Doomed victims are trying to get out of them to freedom, but only more immersed in sticky mucus.

Interestingly, scientists know that a certain type of insects pollinates this plant and remains unharmed, but what kind of science is still unknown.

Genlisay

Unlike most of the predatory plants, which we present you today, the diet of Genleysees most often consists of the simplest and other microscopic organisms, which it attracts and eats, using special leaf traps growing underground. These underground leaves are long, bright and externally similar to the roots. In addition to them, the plant has both ordinary green leaves, which are above the ground and participate in the process of photosynthesis.

Genlisay is distributed in the regions of Africa, Central and South America.

Venus flytrap

Dionaea Muscipula is a small carnivorous plant with an outstanding reputation. Great Charles Darwin considered him one of the most beautiful plants on our planet.

Veinery of the flycut grows into a width to 15 cm. The leaves are arranged in the form of outlets around the underground stem. The plant can have from four to seven leaves, all of them are traps, which consist of two petals. On the outer edge there are spikes. Mukholovka grows low to the ground. It makes it easy to drive insects. Flowers are pretty small in the form of a star are located at the ends of the stems.

The plant blooms in May-June, and then black small seeds of the predatory plant appear. Interesting fact: To cut up to a minimum false slaves, Veinelee Mukholovka has developed a unique mechanism of its trap: it will shut only when the victim for twenty seconds will touch two internal hairs.

Aldrand bubble

And this is a water version of the flour, which floats on the water stroit of the lakes, does not have roots and lures animals into their miniature traps who slam down for the hundredth of a second. Veinelery Mukholovka and Alded Street have a general ancestor - a plant that inhabited on our planet to the Cenozoic Era.

Cefalot

Sweet fragrance published by cephalot attracts insects that fall into his pitcher-trap, where the victim is slowly digested. The caps of the rods of the plant resemble translucent cells that give insect false hope for salvation. This plant is in relationship with some blooming plants (for example, oaks and apple trees), which is not typical for other carnivorous species.

Roridula

This is a native resident of South Africa. Despite the fact that Roridul is a predatory plant, it cannot digest insects, capturing them with sticky hairs. This work plant provides clusters-blinds of the type of Pameridea Roridulae. Life waste beds are excellent fertilizer. In Europe, the fossils of this plant were discovered, whose age is calculated with 40 million years.

Predatory plants at home

Even experienced flowers recognize that grow so unusual plants pretty hard. Perhaps you visited the exhibitions of predatory plants. To grow such samples, you need to follow certain rules:

• predatory plants are desirable to grow in flurarums;
• they need soft scattered lighting, direct sunlight are not transferred;
• watering is carried out with soft water. Many flower products recommend using distilled;
• the overwhelming majority of predator plants do not tolerate the dryness of the soil, and excessive moisture is destructive for them;
• do not fertilize the substrate in which the flower grows (perlite, moss-sfagnum, vermiculite). Fertile soils are not used;
• "Predators" almost never transplanted, only occasionally an overly crowning plant roll into a large container;
• in winter, the carnivorous plants comes resting period. At this time, "predators" do not feed.
• the awakening of the plant occurs in the spring, when new traps begin to form.

Bloom

Experienced lovers of these exotic plants recommend to remove border colors, explaining that this process strongly depletes the plant. Make it is not easy: most of them have unusually beautiful flowers.

Feeding

Judging by the reviews of flower water, this is perhaps the most difficult in the home content of "predators". An ideal feed for these plants is that the plant is powered in natural conditions.

The girlfriend and Rosyanka can not be fed, they find meals themselves, provided that it is not contained in a closed flurarium. Do not feed flowers insects, which contain a large number of Calcium. And fruit flies are quite suitable for this purpose. From seed, carnivorous plants are growing quite rarely - they eat badly. It is more expedient to purchase an adult plant.

These amazing plants belong to carnivorous, as they catch insects and arthropods, isolated digestive juice, dissolve the victim and during this process some or most of the nutrients are obtained. Almost all carnivore plants grow in places where the soil is poor nutrients.

Here are the most famous predatory plants that use different types traps in order to lure his sacrifice.

1. Sarration (Sarracenia)

Sarration or North American insectivorous plant It is a genital carnivorous plants that are found in the areas of the eastern coast of North America, in Texas, in the Great Lakes, in Southeast Canada, but most of the southeastern states.

This plant uses the curb leaves in the form of a lummy as a trap. The leaves of the plant turned into a funnel with an education similar to a hood, which grows above the hole, preventing rainwater from entering, which can dilute digestive juices. Insects attracts color, smell and secretion, similar to nectar on the edge of the pita. A slippery surface and a narcotic substance, bordering nectar, contribute to the fact that insects fall inside, where they die and digest with protease and other enzymes.

2. NEPENTHES (NEPENTHES)

Neventes, tropical insectivorous plant, this is another type of carnivorous plants with a trap, which uses curly leaves in the form of a lummy. There are about 130 species of these plants, which are widespread in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, in the Philippines, Madagascar, Seychelles, in Australia, India, Borneo and Sumatra. This plant also received a nickname "Monkey Cup", as the researchers often observed how the monkeys drank rainwater from them.

Most of the types of nonpopens are high lianas, about 10-15 meters, with a small root system. From the stem is often visible leaves with a mustache, which protrudes from the tip of the sheet and is often used for climbing. At the end of the mustache, the water lily forms a small vessel, which is then expanding and forms a bowl.

The trap contains a liquid released by a plant, which may have a watery or sticky structure, and in which the insects are drowning, which the plant eats. The lower part of the bowl contains glands that absorb and distribute nutrients. Most of the plants are small and they catch only insects, but large species, such as NEPENTHES Rafflesiana and Nepenthes Rajah, can catch small mammals such as rats.

3. Genlisea Predatory Plant (Genlisea)

Genlisay consists of 21 species, usually grows in a humid ground and semi-water medium and distributed in Africa and Central and South America.

Genlisay is small herbs with yellow flowers, which use a crab claw type trap. In such traps it is easy to get, but it is impossible to get out of them because of small hairs that grow to the entrance or, as in this case, forward over the helix.

These plants have two different types of leaves: photosynthetic leaves above the ground and special underground leaves that lure, catch and digest small organisms, such as the simplest. Underground leaves also perform the role of roots, such as water absorption and attachment, since the plant itself is not. These underground leaves underground form hollow tubes that have a kind of spiral. Small microbes fall into these tubes with a stream of water, but cannot leave them. When they get to the exit, they will already be digested.

4. Darlingtonia Californica (Darlingtonia Californica)

Darlingtonia California - This is the only representative of the genus Darlington, which grows in Northern California and Oregon. It grows in swamps and springs with cold running water and is considered a rare plant.

Darlingtonian leaves have a bulbous shape and form a cavity with a hole under bloating, as balloon, structure and two sharp sheets that hang like fangs.

Unlike many carnivorous plants, it does not use the curb leaves for the trap, but use a crab claw type trap. As soon as the insect turns out inside, they are confusing the speck of the light that pass through the plant. They land in thousands of thick thin hairs that grow inside. Insects can follow the hairs deep into digestive organs, but can not go back.

5. Bubble (Utricularia)

A bubble is a genus of carnivorous plants consisting of 220 species. They are found in fresh water or wet soil as ground or water species on all continents, with the exception of Antarctica.

These are the only predatory plants that use a bubble trap. Most species have very small traps in which they can catch very small prey, such as the simplest. Traps are from 0.2 mm to 1.2 cm, and larger extraction fall into large traps, such as water flea or tadpoles.

Bubbles are under negative pressure in relation to the surrounding stop. The hole of the trap opens, sucks the insect and the surrounding water, closes the valve, and all this happens for thousands of shares of seconds.

6. Zirhanka (Pinguicula)

The girlfriend belongs to the group of carnivorous plants, which use sticky, fermented leaves in order to lure and digest insects. Nutrients obtained from insects complement the soil, poor minerals. There are approximately 80 species of these plants in North and South America, Europe and Asia.

Fat leaves juicy and usually have bright green or pink color. There are two special types of cells located on the upper side of the leaves. One is known as flowering iron and consists of secretory cells located on the top of one stem cell. These cells produce a mucous secret, which forms visible drops on the surface of the leaves and acts as velcro. Other cells are called sedentary glands, and they are on the surface of the sheet, producing enzymes, such as amylase, protease and esterase, which contribute to the digestive process. While many types of girlfriend carnivore all year, many types form a dense winter outlet, which is not carnivorous. When summer comes, it flourishes, and he appears new carnivorous leaves.

7. Rosyanka (DROSERA)

Rosyanka is one of the largest clans of carnivorous plants, having at least 194 types. They are on all continents, with the exception of Antarctica. Rosyanka can form root or vertical outlets from 1 cm to 1 m in height and can live up to 50 years.

For Rosyankok, moving glandular tentacles are characterized, crowned with sweet sticky discharge. When the insect lands on sticky tentacles, then the plant begins to move the remaining tentacles in the direction of the victim in order to drive it into the trap. As soon as the insect turned out to be trapped, small seating glands absorb it and nutrients are coming to grow plants.

8. Biblis (BYBLIS)

Biblism or Rainbow Plant this is small view carnivorous plants come from Australia. The rainbow plant got its name for the attractive type of mucus, which covers the leaves in the sun. Despite the fact that these plants are similar to Rosyanka, they are not connected with the last and distinguished by zygomorphic flowers with five curved stamens.

Its leaves have a round cross section, and most often they are elongated and conical at the end. The surface of the leaves is fully covered with ferrous hairs, which highlight a sticky mucous membrane, which serves as a trap for small insects, sitting on the leaves or tentacles of the plant.

9. Aldrovda Bubble (Aldrovanda Vesiculosa)

Aldrand bubble - This is a magnificent self-link, carnivorous water plant. It is usually powered by small water vertebrates using trap-drone.

The plant consists mainly of freely floating stems that reach 6-11 cm long. Leaves traps, a value of 2-3 mm, grow 5-9 curls in the center of the stem. Traps are attached to stiffs that contain air allowing the plant to float. This is a rapidly growing plant and it can reach 4-9 mm per day and in some cases produce a new curl every day. While the plant grows at one end, the other end gradually dies.

The trap of the plant consists of two pieces that slam like a trap. The holes of the traps are directed outside and covered with thin hairs that allow the trap to close around any sacrifice that turns out to be close enough. The trap slams down for tens of milliseconds, which is one of the examples of the rapid movement in the animal world.

10. Veinea Mukholovka (Dionaea Muscipula)

Venus flytrapPerhaps the most famous carnivorous plant that feeds in main insects and spider-shaped. This is a small plant having 4-7 leaves that grow from a short underground stem.

Sheet plate is divided into two areas: flat, long, in the shape of a heart capable of photosynthesis of petioles and a couple of final shares hanging from the main vein of the sheet that form a trap. The inner surface of these fractions contains a red pigment, and the edges are distinguished by mucus.

Dionaea Muscipula VS Caterpillar

Sheet shares do a sharp movement, slamming when its sensory hairs are stimulated. The plant is so developed that it can distinguish a living stimulus from non-living. The leaves slam it in 0.1 second. They are bored with rigid, like cubs with cilias that hold prey. As soon as the victim came across, the inner surface of the leaves is gradually stimulated, and the edges of the shares grow and merge, closing the trap and creating a closed stomach, where the extraction is digested.

Once people believed in the existence of amazing creatures: Griffins, dragons, unicorns and monster with human heads. But the amazing all were predatory plants devouring people. In the 19th century, travelers told about the tree from Madagascar. They said that he had a tentacles like green snakes, labby enough. Of course, this is only a Victorian bike, but as in any fiction, it contained the share of truth.

Dark side of plants - murder and chaos

Exploring the slopes of Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, the Victorian Naturalists found something no less amazing - a representative of the fauna with the leaves in the form of jugs, in one of which was a semi-stewed rut carcass. This discovery has become sensation.

It attracted the attention of the greatest naturalist of that time - Charles Darwin. With the help of painstaking experiments, he found out that many plants catch and kill insects to eat them. For this purpose, they used ways of no less terrible than any kind of Victorian fantasy.

Rosyanka - a flower that eats flies

More than a century later, Charles Darwin proved its wrong. He grown a lot of predatory plants for his experiments, but most of all he was interested in culture called rosanka, or choke.

Darwin is famous for the theory of the origin of new species, but this unusual flower So struck him that he wrote: "The throtter is more interesting to me than the origin of all other types of earth." Rosanka uses leaves for hunting. Insects stick to mucus, but first, naturalists considered it an accident.

Darwin proved that the reality is more faded. The results of the experiment were struck and frightened it. It placed various substances on the leaves:

• milk,
• meat,
• paper
• a rock,
• and even urine.

And fixed how plants react. Milk forced the sheet to roll, meat and urine - too, and the plant did not react on the stone and paper. Darwin revealed that the reaction is provoked by substances containing nitrogen. He also discovered that the plant absorbs nutrients through the leaves. A true predator, like animals.

But why are the plants in the insectivores?

Mostly insectivorous plants live in places such as swamps and fop, where the soil is poor nutrient substancessuch as nitrogen. Nitrogen is still there - he worst on six legs. The plant you just need to catch the beetle to get fertilizer.

As in Darwin experiments, Rosyanka leaves activateWhen the insect stuck. For half an hour, the nearest hairs lean to the insect, sticking it to rock. The leaf turns around the production, the gland on the surface of the sheet is distinguished by chemicals dissolving and digesting insect.

Seeing this, Darwin wrote: "Sometimes it seems to me that the throtter is a disguised animal." In a sense he was right. In the swamps Florida, Rosanka competes with other predators from the world of animals. In some places, the land is completely removed by Pink Rosyanka. Most often in mining there is no shortage, and Rosanka is well feeding.

But the plant has rivals - wolf spiders. Spider gossies a dense network over the earth. If someone comes on a web, the vibration is transmitted to the spider, hiding in her center, and he attacks lightning. When the prey does not have enough spider increases the size of the network to catch more insects and Rosyanka is deprived of food.

Plant predators have other competitors. Rosyanka takes time to kill and digest the victim, and insect throwing attracts attention toha-baby. They are found in these wet forests and often steal the prey of Rosyanka. Sticky Rosyanok traps take different forms: from flat carpets to plants growing up to 2-3 meters in height.

Roridula

Sticky traps are so effective that other plants have developed similar methods. it roridula, growing only in several regions of South Africa. Like Rosyanka, it is covered with a sticky substance, although in contrast to Rosyanka it is rather similar to the resin. Droplets are more sticky than the mucus of Rosyanka and catch larger and strong insects. Roriduli has no digestive glands on the leaves. How does it come with prey?

It helps tiny bugs - klop-blindman. The blindman spends all his life on Rororal. It has an unsuccessful wax coating and can, without feasible, walk along this forest from the superclay. Klop-blindman - predator. On a large plant, their hundreds - more than enough to recycling all the caught roreled insects. Beetles are careful. After all, too big and dangerous mining can be attacked. So, the first 10 minutes blindman only estimates the situation and waiting for the fly asleep.

Then the wilderness, anticipatory feast appear from the wild forest. First, the bugs indignant the company - there and there are flarelves. But the prey is almost dead and everything becomes not to the pool. At the blind man, hard drives, not worse than a medical needle and he sticks it into a fly to suck juices.

Even barely born beetles join the meal. Singing, beetles leave their litters on the leaves - ready digest fertilizerwhich is absorbed by the plant. Roroolel and blindmen are in symbiotic relations: without ropov, they would not be a predator, but blindmen are found in these sticky branches.

Sticky leaves supply insectivorous plants with all nutrients for survival in wet forests and swamps, but one plants went even further. In nature, it grows only on little plot Wet Pine Forest in North Carolina - venus flytrap. It developed from Dyanka sticky trap. Slow folding of the sheet turned into a sensitive trap, capable of grabbing the insect.

Samples of the plant sent Darwin and he raised them in a greenhouse to explore. With a careful consideration, he discovered that in addition to spikes on the edges of the leaves on the surface of each share there are three thin hairs. It is reasonable to assume that this is a trigger. To check, Darwin touched one hairs, but the trap did not always triggered. But when touched to two hairs, the drone immediately slammed. That is, its reasons: for slaves you need energy.

In the nature of the Flyholka dwells where strong rains often come and they don't need to react to each rainy drop. Touch at the same time two hairs more complicated, and the trap will not work by chance.

So that the trap slammed needs to touch two hairs with an interval of no more than 20 seconds. Beetle stimulates the first hairs, launching a watch bomb. Another touch and trap slammed.

Insects have a quick reaction, but the predator plant is even faster - the trap closes for a third of a second. The spikes along the edges of the leaves are crossped as a prison lattice, but not close. There are also reasons for this: the hairs are so sensitive that even on tiny insects, too small for a full meal and a gap between the rods of prison allow the small insect to get out.

A few days later, if nothing concerns nothing, the trap is revealed again. More worthy mining remains inside, continuing to stimulate the hairs. For several hours of the walls, the traps are closed and the cells on the inner surface are distinguished by substances that kill and digesting insects. It is easy to understand why Darwin called the Mukholovka most amazing plant in the world.

Aldrand bubble

Mukholovka has less famous relativesgrowing in water - aldrand bubble. Due to the location of the branches, it looks like a water wheel, but its blades are deadly traps. Each trapes framed sensitive hairs.

Trap all a few millimeters in length and work like a fluffy. Alderded to hunt for seashell racks and copypods. It is worth touching the hairs and the trap triggers almost as fast as a flies. what amazing - After all, these traps are in water, which is much more densely air. The caught rack is slowly digested.

Darwin explored sticky traps and traps and proved that these plants - real predators. But there is a third type of trap, about which Darwin was not so sure - the pit traps of plants with cute leaves. He suggested that they were insectiva and now we know that such traps are the most complex and ingenious of all.

Candy leaves arose independently of each other in

• both America
• in Australia,
• and in Southeast Asia.

They are beautiful, but the beauty of these flowers is deadly. Under it lies traps attracting and killing careless. This design struck Darwin, he doubted so complex systems in natural origin. And in vain.

Bromelia

The answer is in the swampy forests of tropical America. Trees are hunted here bromelias - Predatory plants, relatives of pineapple. Many rude as epiphytes, clinging to the branches and trunks of trees to rise above the ground closer to the sun.

But the roots hanging in the air cannot absorb water and nutrients from the soil. Instead, the leaves form a well in the center of the plant, where water is poured into the rain. There are also leaves falling from trees. So plants get the necessary water and food from a personal source. Or not so personal?

Many creatures of Bromelia funnels seem to be miniature ponds. In South America, tree frogs are moved from the plants on the plant in search of a non-busy well, that is, places to bring offspring. But some bromels are not as hospitable.

Like many bromelia, bromelia Brocheania In the very center of the plant - a funnel, but inside it is acid and digestive enzymes. Its leaves are covered with wax and slippery as ice. The ant, climbed onto such a sheet, slides and slides to a fatal well, where it will be digested and will turn into food.

Sarration

Starting from the simplest, nature by natural selection created more complex traps. One of the most elegant hidden in the far end of the swampy pine forest in the south-east of the United States. This carnivore plant - sarration.

They grow long funnel flowers and attract insects sweet nectar. Trying to get it, insects sculp down. Mining falls on the bottom of the traps and cannot get out - it is impossible to rise along the inner surface of the funnel. The victim dies, and the plant allocates enzymes and acid, splitting caught insects.

The droplets of the mounted sweet nectar protrude on the bottom of the sheet covered with thin hairs, on which the insect is difficult to resist. High visual funnels and attract insects promise nectar no worse than bright colors. Insects are so busy eating nectar that they do not notice how to keep it becomes more difficult.

The walls of the funnels slippery and no salvation, and the plant allocates digestive enzymes, slowly dissolving the victim. A similar meal fills all the costs of the production of sweet nectar, but sometimes the works are wary in vain. Sweet drops are eaten by a butterfly sailboat, too large to fall into the trap. And in many jugs live green spider-trotwaiting for the opportunity to intercept prey from the plant.

Conclusion

Today, our interest in these amazing carnivorous plants is as large as after their discovery and scientists probably waiting new surprises. Over the past few years, about a dozen new types of insectivore plants are opened, but there are still hundreds of non-investigated regions, where dozens of new species are waiting for their discovery.

We are just starting to study incredibly complex relationships of predator plants with animals and other organisms. Victorian stories about cannon plants were only myths. But discoveries recent years It was shown that in the world of insectivorous plants, truth is much amazing inventory.

Why are victims of these plants voluntarily climb into deadly traps? Crystrous plants share their secrets.

Venusa Mukholovka slams the trap, if twice touch its tiny hairs.

The hungry fly is looking for how to get started. After having a smell, similar to the fragrance of nectar, she sits on a fleshy red sheet - it seems to her that this is an ordinary flower. While the fly drinks a sweet liquid, it hurts the laptice of tiny hairs on the surface of the sheet, then another one ... And here the walls grow around the flies. The gear edges of the sheet are closed, like jaws. The fly is trying to break out, but the drone is closed firmly. Now, instead of nectar, the leaf is distinguished by enzymes dissolving the insect's inside, gradually turning them into sticky crawl. Muhu has suffered the greatest humiliation, which only may fall to the share of an animal: a plant killed her.

Tropical non-tapenes attracts insects with a sweet aroma, but you should be uncompressed to sit down on his slippery rim, how they immediately sculp into his expansion womb.

Plants against animals.

The swampy savanna extending 140 kilometers around Willmington (North Carolina, USA) is the only place on Earth, where Venereine Mukholovka (Dionaea Muscipula) is a radical inhabitant. There are also other types of prey plants - not so famous and not so rare, but no less amazing. For example, nonpentens (Nepenthes) with jugs similar to champagne glasses, where insects are found (and sometimes animals bigger). Or Rossera (DROSERA), clamping a victim with sticky hairs, and a bubbletone (utricularia), a submarine plant, suction mining like a vacuum cleaner.

Many predator plants (and such more than 675 species) use passive traps. The girlfriend is bristing with sticky hairs, which hold the insect while the digestive fluid works.

Pets feed on animals cause an inexplicable alarm. Probably the fact is that such an order of things contradicts our submission of universe. The famous Naturalist Karl Linny, which created a system for the classification of wildlife in the XVIII century, which we still use, refused to believe that it is possible. After all, if Venusa Mukholovka is in fact devouring insects, it violates the order of nature, headed by God. Linny believed that the plants catch insects randomly, and if the unfortunate buckacha stops twice, it will be released.

Australian Rosyanka attracts bugs with droplets, similar to the dew, and then worst with their hairs.

Charles Darwin, on the contrary, fascinated the self-welfare behavior of green predators. In 1860, soon after the scientist first saw one of these plants (it was Rosyanka) on the herasskal wastely, he wrote: "Rosyanka is interested in me more than the origin of all kinds of light."

The silhouettes of caught insects, as if the shadows of the theater of the Shadows, look through the sheet of Philippine Nevenchles. The wax surface of the inner wall of the jug does not give insect to get to freedom, and enzymes at its bottom are removed from the victim nutrients.

Darwin spent not one month for experiments. He saved flies on the leaves of predatory plants and watched, as those slowly compress the hairs around their victim; He even threw the pieces of raw meat and egg yolk to the voracious plants. And I found out: in order to cause the reaction of the plant, there is enough weight of the human hair.

Having hated the smell of food, the cockroach looks into the jug. Insectivores, like other plants, are engaged in photosynthesis, but most of them live in swamps and in other places where the soil is poor in nutrients. Nitrogen, which they get, fighting with their victims, helps them feel great in these difficult conditions.

"It seems to me that it is hardly for someone who happened to observe a more amazing phenomenon in the plant kingdom," the scientist wrote. At the same time, Rosyanka did not pay much attention to water droplets, even if they fell from a high height. To respond to false alarm during the rain, Darwin reasoned, it would be a big mistake for a plant - so this is not an accident, but a natural adaptation.

Most of the predator plants of alone insects eat, and others are forced to help them in reproduction. In order not to catch the potential pollinator for lunch, the sarration holds flowers away from the jugs-traps - on long stems.

Subsequently, Darwin explored other types of predator plants, and in 1875 summarized the results of his observations and experiments in the book "Insectivorest plants". Especially he admired the extraordinary speed and the power of the Venus Mukholovka, which he called one of the most amazing plants in the world. Darwin found that when the leaf is closed by the edge, it turns into a "stomach" that distinguishes enzymes that dissolve production.

Their buds hang, like Chinese lanterns, lubricating the bees in difficult to constructed pollen cameras.

During the long observations, Charles Darwin came to the conclusion: a predator sheet to open again, it takes more than a week. Probably, he suggested, the cloves along the edges of the sheet are not even until the end so that very small insects can escape the flight, and the plant, therefore, it would not have to spend energy on low-heropy food.

Some predator plants, such as Rosyanka, can polliate themselves, if there are volunteer insects and do not appear.

The lightning reaction of the Venus Mukholovka - her trap slams down over the tenth of a second - Darwin compared with the abbreviation of animal muscles. However, plants have neither muscles or nerve endings. How do they manage to react exactly like animals?

If the adhesive hairs can't grab a large fly quite tight, insect, albeit the crumpled, break free. In the world of predator plants, says William McLuffly, the US Botanical Garden, it happens that the insects die, and the "hunters" remain hungry.

Vegetable electricity.

Nowadays, biologists studying cells and DNA begin to understand how these plants hunt, eat and digest food - and most importantly, as they "learned" to do it. Alexander Volkov, a specialist in the physiology of plants from the Okwood University (Alabama, USA), is convinced: after many years of research, he finally managed to reveal the secret of the veneree mukholovka. When the insect touches the paw of hairs on the surface of the flybut leaf, a tiny electric discharge occurs. The charge is accumulated in the sheet tissue, but it is not enough so that the slamming mechanism worked is insurance against false alarm. But most often the insect hurts yet hairs, adding to the first category the second, and the sheet closes.

On the South African Royal Rosyanka, the largest representative of the kind, the flower blooms. Leaves of this magnificent plant can reach a half-meter in length.

Experiments of Volkova show that the discharge moves down the tunnels filled with a liquid, penetrating the sheet, and this makes it open in the cell walls. Water rushes out of cells located on the inner surface of the sheet, to what are located on the outer side, and the leaf at the same time quickly changes the form: it becomes concave from the convex. Two sheets are collapsed, and the insect turns out to be in the Western.

Tiny, frosted-size, insectivorous plant of the genus Cefalotus from Western Australia prefers to be touched by crawling insects. Direct hairs and mounted smell, it puts ants to his digestive subsoil.

The underwater trap of bubbles is arranged no less intense. She pumps water from bubbles, lowering pressure in them. When water flea or some small creature, sailing past, hurts the hairs on external surface The bubble, its cover opens, and low pressure carries water inside, and with it - and prey. In one five hundredth of a second of a second, the lid shakes again. Then the cells of the bubble pump out water, restoring the vacuum in it.

The North American hybrid filled with water seduces the bech of the promise of nectar and the rim, which looks like an ideal landing site. Feed meat - not the most effective way for the plant to ensure itself with the necessary substances, but, undoubtedly, one of the most extravagant.

Many other types of predator plants resemble a sticky tape from the flies: they grab prey with sticky hairs. Sugar studies resort to other strategy: insects they catch in long leaves - jugs. The largest depth of the jugs reaches a third meter, and they can even digest any non-rigorous frog or rat.

The deadly trap of the jug becomes due to chemicals. NEPENTHES RAFFLESIANA, for example, the calmantane growing in the jungle, distinguishes nectar, on the one hand, attracting insects, and on the other, a slippery film on which they cannot resist. Insects, descending on the rim of the jug, are clenched inside and fall into a viscous digestive fluid. They are desperately moving their paws, trying to free themselves, but the liquid pulls them on the bottom.

Many predator plants have special gigners that allocate enzymes are strong enough to penetrate the solid chitine insect shell and get to the nutrients hiding under it. But the purple sarration, occurring in the swamps and scanty sandy soils in North America, other organisms attract to digest food.

Sarration helps to function a complex food network, which includes the larvae of mosquitoes, small midges, simplest and bacteria; Many of them can live only in this environment. The animals crush the prey falling in the jug, and the fruits of their works are organisms in bed. In the end, sarration absorbs nutrients that allocate during this feast. "Thanks to the animals in this processing chain, all reactions are accelerated," says Nicholas Gotelley from Vermont University. - When the digestive cycle is over, the plant pumped into a jug of oxygen so that its inhabitants have something to breathe. "

Thousands of sarrations grow on the swamps of the Harvard forest belonging to the University of the same name, in Central Massachusetts. Aaron Ellison, the main ecologist of the forest, together with Gotelley, is trying to figure out which evolution reasons prompted representatives of flora to develop a tendency to meat diet.

Predator plants clearly benefit from the eating animals: the more flies they feed researchers, the better they grow. But what exactly is the victims? From them predators get nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients to produce capturing light enzymes. In other words, eating animals allows predator plants to do what all representatives of the flora are engaged in: growing, getting energy from the sun.

The work of green predators is not easy. They have to spend a huge amount of energy on the creation of adaptations for animal catch: enzymes, pumps, sticky hairs and other things. Sarration or Mukholovka cannot a lot of photosynthesis, because, unlike plants with conventional leaves, their leaves have no solar panels that can absorb light in large quantities. Ellison and Gotelley believe that the benefits of a carnivorous life outweigh the costs of its maintenance only under special conditions. Poor soil swamps, for example, contains little nitrogen and phosphorus, so there are predator plants there is an advantage over collections that produce these substances with more familiar ways. In addition, there are no shortage of the sun on the swamps, therefore, even ineffective plant predators are caught enough light for survival.

Nature more than once went on such a compromise. Comparing DNA of the predatory and "ordinary" plants, scientists found that various groups of predators are evolutionally related to each other, but appeared independently of each other at least in six cases. Some predator plants, externally similar, have only distant kinship. And the tropical genus NEPENTHES, and the North American Sarracenia possess the leaves-jugs and for fishing uses the same strategy, but they come from different ancestors.

Bloodthirsty, but defenseless.

Unfortunately, the most properties that allow plant predators to flourish in not the most common natural conditions make them extremely sensitive to change in the environment. Many Marsh of North America enters excess nitrogen - the fertilizer of surrounding agricultural areas and emissions of power plants. Predator plants are so ideally adapted to the low nitrogen content in the soil, which cannot cope with this unexpected "gift". "In the end, they just die from overvoltage," says Ellison.

Other danger comes from people. Illegal trade in predatory plants is common so wide that nerds try to keep in the secret of places where some meet rare species. Poachers thousands of Venus Mukholovka from North Carolina and sell them from roadside trays. Agricultural Department of the State for some time marks wild paint specimens by safe paint, invisible with usual lighting, but flickering in ultraviolet rays so that inspectors, finding these plants on sale, could quickly determine where they are from the greenhouse or from the swamp.

Even if the poaching succeeds to stop (which also causes doubts), predator plants will continue to suffer from many misfortunes. Wednesday of their habitat disappears, giving way to shopping centers and residential quarters. Forest fires are not allowed to get roaring, why other plants get the opportunity to grow quickly and win rivalry with veneree flies.

Flies maybe this is happy. But for those who admire the amazing ingenuity of evolution, this is a big loss.

Do you know that there are several hundred carnivorous plants in the world? No, they are not so terrible as in the American film "Horror Shop". Such flowers are powered by insects, thaws and even frogs and rats. Interestingly, some predator plants have long proven themselves as useful pets. Claim that home flowerwhich eats insects helps to fight with pests like mosquitoes, flies and spiders.

Why plants switched to animal food

The plant feeding in insects, evolutionally changed its diet not from a good life. All types of these carnivorous grow on soils with a lack of nitrogen and other beneficial substances. On sandy soil or peat, they are very hard to survive, so some species adapted to life due to the ability to absorb the animal protein. It is the animal food that is able to completely resume the reserves of nitrogen and minerals.

Plants use various traps for catching the victim. In addition, all plant predators are distinguished by a bright color and attractive smell that are associated with insects with nectarone flowers. But do not forget that animal food is only "vitamins" for plants, and the main nutrition for them is photosynthesis.

Varieties of predatory plants

To date, scientists have described about 500 species of carnivorous plants, which belong to 19 families. It can be concluded that the evolutionary development of these groups of organisms occurred in parallel and independently.

Self famous plantseating insects:

• sarration;
• genlisay;
• darlingtonia;
• pemphigus;
• girlfriend;
• sundew;
• biblism;
• aldrand bubble;
• venus flytrap.

Interesting fact: Mukholovka has the Latin name Muscipula, which in translated into Russian means not "Mukholovka", but "Mousetrap".

The prevalence of plants entomophages

Predatory plants are not only exotic representatives of the biosphere. They are found everywhere - from the Equator to the Arctic. Most often, they can be stumbled upon wet places, especially on the swamps. Most of all species recorded in the South West part of Australia. Some species are esvibionats and grow in many biocenoses. The range of other species is more limited - for example, Venusina Mukholovka is found in nature solely in South and North Carolina.

What types of growing in Russia

There are 13 types of predatory plants from 4 births in Russia. Rose Rosanka is represented by two species: Rosyanka Ordinary and Rosyanka English. They grow mainly on sphagnum swamps. Aldrand bubble is found as in the European part Russian Federationand in the Far East and the Caucasus.

The bubble bubble in Russia is represented by four species, the most common among which is a bubbler ordinary. it water plantswhich differ in the speed of their growth. They are found in shallow water throughout Russia (with the exception of the Far North). Also in our areas you can meet representatives of the granium genus, which grow on swamps, shores of streams, and some on trees and moss.

Diet of carnivorous flowers

Most of the predatory plants (Rosyanka, Sarration, non-Tenty) feed insects. The diet of water representatives, such as alpores or bubbles, make up mostly small crustaceans. There are also species that hunt larger production: fishes of fish, tritons, toads and reptiles. Some of the largest representatives of Neventends Rafflee predaters and Raja Nenventures feed not only insects, but also mammals, such as mice and rats.

Types of traps

Predators catch their victims with the help of traps, which, depending on the species, are several types:

• leaves-jugs. Such a design has a cap, and inside is filled with water (non-tape, darlingtonium);
• capps leaves. A modified leaf consists of two sash with teeth at the edges. When the insect turns out inside, the flaps are closed (veinelery of the mukholovka);
• velcro leaves. On the sheet plates there are special hairs that allocate a sticky secret, attracting insects (Rosyanka, girlfriend);
• sucking traps. Water along with the victim under pressure is suused in a special bubble (bubble);
• traps of "crab claws". In them, victims easily fall, but they cannot get out of the hairs growing forward along the spirals (Genlisay).

At home can be kept next species carnivorous plants:

• venus Mukholovka;
• all types of Rosyanok;
• tropical granasses;
• sarration;
• dwarf non-charges.

In Russia, the most popular indoor predator Is Veineree Mukholovka. A pot with a flower must be kept on a well-lit windowel or on the table with artificial lighting. The air temperature in the room in the summer should be within 18-25 ° C, and in the winter - 10-13 ° C. Since the mukholovka is a moisture-loving plant, the soil in the pot must constantly moisturize. Watering the plant needs clean rain or melt water.

Reproduction

Mukholovka multiplied with stalling, the division of the bush and with the help of cross-pollination. The flowering period of the Dionee occurs in the end of spring. In natural biocenoses, the plant pollinated insects. At home, the flowers need to be performed by hand, transferring to the soft tassel to pollen out of the stamens on the pestle stil.

Podkord

If the plant is called carnivorous, it does not mean that it needs to be fed with meat. Mukholovka must hunt the small insects itself to fully digest food and get the necessary substances. Also, do not forget that the main nutrition of the Dionee gets from the soil.

Care during rest

In the cold season, Venusina Mukholovka ceases its height and flows into anabiosis. At some point, it may even seem to you that the plant dies. But this is not the case, the Dionee needs this state to gain strength to the next period of vegetation. At this time, your task will remove the leaves and wait for new ones.

Plant that eats flies: video